


It has to rain somewhere

by Elsinore_and_Inverness



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Chronic Pain, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kind of all over the place tonally
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-01-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 09:48:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28668744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsinore_and_Inverness/pseuds/Elsinore_and_Inverness
Summary: There was this notion of ‘I’ve got this far, how much worse could it get?’ Drumknott wished people wouldn’t think like that. It didn’t have good outcomes.
Relationships: Rufus Drumknott & Havelock Vetinari, Rufus Drumknott/Havelock Vetinari
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	It has to rain somewhere

There was a fainting couch in the palace. It had never actually been called that because it was a term coined in the Century of the Fruitbat and the Patricians of that century either had no interest in moving furniture around or never thought to call it anything but a chaise longue méridienne. It had been reupholstered twice too many times and was not to any appreciable degree up to actually being fallen upon. What it was good for, however, was being moved from room to room. It normally occupied a space in a corridor beside a bookshelf full of Nothingfjordic novels Lord Snapcase had evidently bought after seeing them fill out the shelves of the bookshelf in a furniture shop. There were ten copies of _The Ninety-Nine-Year-Old Woman Who Came Back Through The Front Door._ In six of them half the pages were printed upside down.

The fainting couch wasn’t there anymore. Drumknott stared at the empty patch of carpet. It didn’t make sense. But people often made decisions that didn’t make sense when they were suffering. There was this notion of ‘I’ve got this far, how much worse could it get?’ Drumknott wished people wouldn’t think like that. It didn’t have good outcomes. Instead of lying on the couch where he might be seen or on his bed where he definitely wouldn’t, Vetinari had taken the couch somewhere.

Walking a circuit through the rooms that were not hidden behind secret passageways, he found Vetinari and the couch in a small office used mostly as storage space.

He was curled in the fetal position, injured leg pinned under the the other one possibly in an unconscious attempt to shield it or because the pressure helped.

There was a small bottle placed on top of a pile of blank forms drafted for the printing press.

“That’s an opium compound, isn’t it?

A minute nod.

“Is it doing anything at all?

A minute shake of the head.

“It’s new, you shouldn’t have any tolerance to it.”

Having that pointed out seemed to add its own focus to the steely edge of the the torment from his thigh. What could you do when chemistry seemed to have run out of track?

Rufus crawled onto the couch so he was almost wrapped around Vetinari, centimeters apart. Far closer than would normally be comfortable.

The fingers of Vetinari’s hand tapped the couch, more clacks operator than pianist.

“It will peak and then it will come back down to the point where... I feel as though I shall either be sick or pass out.” It was a twisting, stabbing pain, significantly worse than actually being stabbed, but he didn’t know what else to compare to. It didn’t seem to stay especially localized either, it seemed to overwhelm his entire body. His brain didn’t even bother to assign colors at this level of intensity, like staring into a bright light where you’re seeing only pain rather than any visual at all. It did when it was less intense, for instance menthol-cold grey-mauve haunted nearly every minute.

Lord Vetinari had long legs, even for his height, and the bullet—small-metal-ball-projectile, Leonard had called it, but somehow the Latatian word for “small round thing” had acquired a Quirmian diminutive—had gone through his mid-thigh. The exit wound was an atrophic hollow.

Rufus felt with sure hands, finding the knots in the muscle around the deep scar tissue and pressing on them and Vetinari’s actual vision went, swallowed by red dark.

Drumknott scraped the fingernails of his other hand lightly across Vetinari’s scalp, muttering sounds that weren’t quite words.

He kept his hand on leg when his Lordship opened his eyes. “Well. That certainly did something. Thank you Rufus. I do not deserve you.”

“Desert is an unhelpful concept.”

“Well, it can’t rain everywhere.”

Drumknott stared into space for a several seconds considering the fact that Vetinari had made a pun based on the way a word was spelled rather than how it sounded.


End file.
